Return of the HF Hacks

You know its sad when a guy who ran the print magazine version of HockeysFuture into the ground after just 3 issues has more credibility than the current band of hacks that occupy the editorial position at that empty shell of a website. And yet, that's where we are. Shane Malloy has more journalistic credibility than Holly Gunning (HF's online editor) and Ken McKenna (HF's managing editor). How do I know this? Because Shane Malloy [url=http://msn.foxsports.com/nhl/story/5441640]actually did a shred of homework before writing an article about the Lightning organization[/url] and Gunning and company [url=http://hockeysfuture.com/article.php?sid=8549\]clearly didn't.[/url]
HockeysFuture released their Spring organizational rankings today, and first let me say it's a really bright thing to release rankings a week and a half into the CHL playoffs. After all, it's not like the postseason is important or anything. Yes Holly, that's sarcasm. In any event, once again the biased HockeysFuture editorial staff and their intrepid band of statistic cut and pasters have pegged the Lightning 30th in the league in terms of prospects. On the eve of the graduation of the third Lightning prospect the club has placed into the NHL this season no less! Gotta give 'em credit for having chutzpah. No clue, but they've definitely got chutzpah.
First, a little background. You'll remember in November Bolt Prospects [url=http://www.boltprospects.com/node/399]filleted HockeysFuture[/url] for their horrendous top-20 rankings of the Lightning organization that was delayed for months because, even today, HockeysFuture STILL doesn't have a full time writer assigned to the team. You'll remember, the rankings were so terrible a HockeysFuture employee [url=http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=188847]actually went onto the Lightning board on that site, apologized and showed remorse for having to post the rankings under his name.[/url] That employee subsequently had his post removed and the Lightning board's prospects threads were all removed, presumably by Gunning, in a stunning display of fascist censorship that would even make Mussolini blush. Then again, maybe it wasn't Phil Laugher's confession about what a terrible farce HF has become that made Gunning so angry. Perhaps it was because Bolt Prospects acquired her own rough draft of the top-20 list which exposed just how out of touch she is. And remember Holly, we got it from Scooter Libby. In that glorious monumnent to ignorance, Gunning actually ranked Paul Ranger, who had been in the NHL for about a month at that point, the 17th rated prospect in the Lightning organization below such luminaries as Zbynek Hrdel. She then proceeded to leave Nick Tarnasky and Karri Ramo off the list ALTOGETHER. Tarnasky, you'll remember, has seen two callups with the Lightning this year while Ramo has been ranked in the top-10 of Lightning rankings from both THN and FoxSports.
Did Holly learn from her mistakes? Did HockeysFuture actually choose to mend their ways? Nope. As I said in November, Gunning and HF management are still, "too lazy to do any real journalism about the Lightning and too pig headed and self righteous to go out and find someone actually capable of doing the job right."
First clue that HockeysFuture was smoking pine cones on their latest rankings: "A number of the Lightning's forwards such as Ryan Craig and Darren Reid should find success as checking forwards, while others like Radek Smolenak, [b]Adam Henrich[/b] and Stanislav Lascek have the potential to be more." Would that be the same Adam Henrich that has spent most of the year in the ECHL? Sweet Donny Murdoch's ghost! Even Holly's army of stat copiers should've uncovered that nugget while doing their usual barely surface deep *reporting* while scouring hockeydb.
So why was Adam Henrich's name even brought up? Because on Hockeysfuture, 1st and 2nd round picks are the only prospects who matter. Mere mortals like Ryan Craig who have 14 goals in less than half of a season as a rookie, but were 8th round picks (God forbid!), don't. Riddle me this HF: why is Ryan Craig, who is on a pro rated pace for about 28 goals in a full season supposedly unable "to fill anything more than a supporting role in the NHL" while such burgeoning superstars as Rostislav Olesz, who has just 8 goals in 13 MORE games, are somehow the second coming? Why is that HF? Oh, that's right, it's because Olesz was a first round pick. How foolish of me to expect you to look beyond that!
And how foolish of me to expect Blair Jones, who finished 6th in the entire WHL in scoring, to even get a mention in an article about Lightning prospects! Shame one me! I should've known the fact Kenndal McArdle, Jones' teammate in Moose Jaw, was outscored by Jones this season was irrelevant because Jones was a 4th round pick and McArdle was a 1st. In case you were wondering, that also was all sarcasm Holly.
The good news is that the word is out about HF's hackery. In private, the Lightning express many of the same reservations about HF's *rankings* that we have. And that's something isn't it? I mean, congratulations Holly Gunning, your staff has actually been noticed by an NHL GM. And that's positive isn't it? Isn't it?
Come to think of it, no. No it isn't. In my humble opinion, if HockeysFuture's [url=mailto:owner@hockeysfuture.com]owner[/url] really cared about the product he's putting out, Gunning and McKenna would be fired posthaste.